CNN's Jake Tapper texted Anthony Fauci to poke fun at a rival host's perceived lack of intelligence during the pandemic, newly released diary entries show. Fauci appeared on Fox News' The Ingraham Angle on April 16, 2020, and promptly chided host Laura Ingraham for comparing COVID-19 to viruses that don't have vaccines such as HIV while wondering if lockdowns could be alleviated before the rollout of a vaccine. Fauci publicly dismissed such comparisons as 'misleading.' Diary entries released by Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul over the weekend reveal how the doctor was then met with a text from Tapper. 'Tapper (CNN) texted me saying sarcastically, "Hard to believe Paura [sic] Ingraham went to Dartmouth, isn't it. All of us alumni are very proud,"' Fauci wrote to himself. He further framed the interview as 'my Laura Ingraham hit.' Two days before, on April 14, 2020, Fauci received a phone call from Tapper, who 'wanted to make sure' an interview the two had done on CNN on April 12 'did not cause me any problems,' Fauci recalled. That May, Fauci gushed about Tapper and then-CNN star Chris Cuomo coming to his 'defense on their shows.'

He wrote of a segment Tapper manned that month surrounding 'the inadequate response of the Trump administration to the pandemic': 'I came out relatively well.' Two months later, on July 1, 2020, Fauci wrote how he 'had dinner over [at] Jake Tapper and Jen Tapper’s home in DC. 'Terrific couple. Friendship building,' the doctor gushed. Tapper woke the disease expert with call later that month, Fauci recalled. He wrote about Tapper being 'furius [sic] at POTUS for tweeting' angrily about an interview Tapper did that touched on delays with rolling out COVID testing kits.

'Jake was really pissed at the craziness of it all,' remembered Fauci, a day after Trump shared a Twitter post accusing him and other disease experts of 'lying' with their dire assessments of the administration's situation at the time. Fauci's 'friendship' with Tapper continued with another dinner with the journalist's family on October 20, 2020, he wrote. 'Relaxed, good time. Jake clearly believes that Trump is totally nuts,' the diary entry read. Other entries show Fauci seemingly infatuated with his budding celebrity. 'Press is going wild with me.

Front page in Washintgton [sic] Post yesterday and Op Ed by Maureen Dowd in NY Times today about me and my relationship with the POTUS. Profile by Peter Nicholas on me in The Atlantic,' he wrote in March 2020, just days into the crisis. Within a few weeks, Fauci was punch drunk over the sudden rush of attention. 'Big front page article about me appeared in the Washington Post. Very flattering,' he wrote in May of that year.

'It is not hyoperbole[sic] to say that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable person [sic] in the world.' Two days later, Fauci wrote: 'Apparently the WH is very upset that I am being profiled and it looks like I am putting down the POTUS and becoming a star that outshines him. The press is playing into this as is the tweet storm. Very stressful!!' The diary entries are being released ahead of a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing slated for Wednesday, where Fauci will testify.

The diary entries last until December 2022, where Fauci complained, 'It is clear (I have not been reporting it every day) that the far, extreme right and Qanon literally hate me.' He retired from federal work that month. Dr Fauci, 85, has not been convicted of or proven to have committed any crimes. The emergence of COVID-19 in late 2019 is the subject of two main theories - one being a laboratory-related incident and the other natural zoonotic transmission. Paul has previously accused Fauci of dodging a previous commitment to testify and providing funding for laboratories in China where workers manipulate viruses to make them more deadly or infectious.